A question about the standard

[Giuseppe Vacanti]

Greetings.

I have a question about the FITS standard that I haven't been able to
address by reading NOST 100-1.1.

4.3.1 says that in the header of a primary HDU card imnages without
information shall be filled with ASCII blanks.

5.1.1 (syntax of card images) says that header (any header I suppose)
card images shall consist of key word (mandatory I suppose), optional
value, and optional comment.

Now my question is: is it legal to have (before the END key word) a
card image filled with blanks? 

I have this problem in the header of a binary table extension. Trying
to answer this question I noted that FTOOLS's fverify says the file is
ok, FTOOLS's fv cannot display the extension containing such cards
(but it doesn't complain), CFITSIO reports an error (202=key word does
not exist), FTOOLS's fdump will gladly show the header. 

So I'm getting mixed replies from the software. Would anybody care to
comment on this problem?

Thanks.

Giuseppe Vacanti